The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour (english novels to improve english txt) 📗

and marked the farewell to a good friend, a brother. Raw hands, bleeding, after wrenching at stones, or sharp flint rock to cover their bodies. No foragers, no wolves or dogs and no vultures over the Sturry cemetery.

He assumed that his mum still came to the grave. Cammy remembered that she would go into the back bedroom, stand on tiptoe, look out over the little garden at the rear of the house and might see the raised earth and the wooden cross. By now the earth would have sunk and there might be a proper stone in place; likely that Cammy’s half-brother would have paid for it.

He went towards the grave. Bats flew around him. His half-sister was a few places to the left, and a couple of rows behind a big stone on which was the carved message that for years had made Mum need to wipe her eyes: If tears could build a stairway And memories build a lane We’d walk right up to Heaven And bring you home again. Not that Mum would have allowed anyone to see a single tear, would turn away to hide it. He did the counting, to the left of a child’s grave and paused, then went right . . . There was now a stone but only a few inches high and the earth had settled and grass grew, and one rose was fresh in a vase. Must have been cut and placed within the last 72 hours because it had not drooped and the petals were still tightly bound. Not that his half-sister had meant much to Cammy. But she had been Mum’s favourite child. He stood there in the darkness and the rain was on his face and his ankles were sodden and the stubble was growing fast on his cheeks . . . And himself? By the next evening, he would be – whatever was left of him – on a mortuary slab and the post mortem would take place the following morning. And when they had finished chopping at him and slicing him, they would order a cremation and the ashes would not be given to his mum. They would be frightened, after what he’d achieved in the morning, that his name would become a rallying cry and his grave become a shrine. Needed to be certain of that because it would be hard in the last moments.

He supposed that his footprints would be clear in the muddy grass around his half-sister’s grave. Not important. He stood and listened. As the leader of the brothers he had always preached the need for moments of quiet, for time spent hoovering up the sounds of the night: a dog might bark and should be avoided; a sentry might cough and should be approached from behind and speared with a knife; a twig might break, leaves might be scuffed as an enemy changed position, easing his weight from left foot to right; a weapon might be armed; or a match scraped and the flame hidden in cupped hands . . .

Vicky, good and warm and welcoming Vicky and all the crying and yelling had been fake and for her husband. Vicky had said that the spook people had been around to hers. He thought they would be crap, thought also that if they kept watch it would be from a car facing the front, and that the guns would be up the road. Not here . . . believed if they had been all around the house, telescopic sights on him and image-intensifier lenses picking him out, that he would have known it, sensed it. Good to have been with Vicky but the rainwater was stinging the scrapes on his face from the chair.

He mouthed something to the low stone and dropped his fingers on to it, traced the indentations, read her name, wished her well; had not much else to tell her.

Wondered what he would say to his mum, when they hugged, her warm and dry and him cold and wet . . . He reached the overgrown hedge at the back of the cemetery. Paused there, again, to listen.

Sadie Jilkes, home from work, would eat toast, drink tea, then sit in her chair looking out through the French windows into her back garden. It seemed that the rain eased and the panes no longer ran with falling streams . . . She knew which way he would come.

The plate was still on her lap and she could not be bothered to place it on the table, nor could she be bothered to put the empty mug there which was balanced on her thigh. There was a considerable amount that Sadie could no longer be bothered to do. There was an empty vase on the table; there were hardy annuals outside in the beds from which she could have cut flowers but had not. The grass outside was too long and she had a push mower in the garage but could not be bothered to use it. Weeds choked the beds – she had not cleared them for weeks . . . Funny that amongst the chaos of the garden the rose bush flourished. It had been a present from her elder son. Her elder son had formed an alliance with a guy who owned a market garden. He grew roses, legitimate, and also grew cannabis plants under glass or in plastic tunnels, and it had been thought a great wheeze, sure to be safe, overlooked. The guy was inside on a five-year stretch but, long before, her son had brought her the rose bush, had planted it himself, had shown an aptitude she’d not have acknowledged. Most weeks in the summer she would use kitchen scissors to cut a stem, lop off the leaves and then place it in the vase on the grave. That was the way her younger son would come, and she expected he would pause by his half-sister’s stone.

As she looked out of the window and waited to see a shifting shadow, in her mind she played the image of the man who had